Isn’t it funny how a sound or a plate of food or even a smell can bring back to your mind a memory you had completely forgotten about? Just a couple of weeks ago I smelled a perfume I hadn’t come across in ages and it reminded of the time when I decided that moving to London was a good idea and I ended up sharing a flat with someone who wore this perfume all the time.
I didn’t stay long in London before deciding to try and find somewhere to live where people wouldn’t just step over you if you collapsed in the middle of the street. However, one of my abiding memories, apart from the day I got the chance to step over someone else, is of when I moved flats.
Being a hip, worldy wise I decided to do it by tube, without realising that even if I had been able to jump forward in time and buy the recently posted 15 passenger vans for sale (before finding out that I had irretrievably changed the space time contiuum by not bumping into that old lady at Tooting Bec station) it would have taken me hours to move all my stuff.
You see, I had recently returned from Bolivia (did I mention the fact that I am a hip, worldy wise guy) and had about 15 rucksacks filled with stuff I had posted back, what I left behind in the UK and the bag I had taken on the flight home, the stuffed- to-overflowing nature of which had caused my dirty underwater to be strewn around conveyor belts in three different time zones.
I had also somehow decided that bringing back 6 cute little dolls with me was a good idea. Unfortunately I hadn’t considered – and mock me if you will – the idea of peeling them off the hunking great logs they were stuck to. This meant that I carried about 50 kilos to the aforementioned Tooting Bec station, sat in the tube train for an hour and a half observing the almost religious eye avoidance ritual with the other weirdos and then walked about 15 minutes at the other end to my new home somewhere near Turnpike Lane, before going back and doing the whole thing again.
Moving house in style
I’ve no idea if I was using internal frame backpacks, external frame backpacks or frameless blooming backpacks but I know that I spent a whole weekend doing this inane back and forward trip, as each round trip took more than 3 hours and I was exhausted after the first one.
One final, almost related point I want to make is about bacherolette party shirts. We call these hen parties in the UK, which sounds a lot less wholesome but probably more accurate. Anyway, moving to London is like getting married for three reasons. Firstly, you can’t go to the local pub anymore. Secondly, you spend far too much time with just one person (you partner / the guy who always sits next to you on the tube and might be either a bank manager or a psycho, or both). Thirdly, it’s great when your income doubles, but not so great when you realise that your expenses have tripled.
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